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How is this not big news? It sounds like it’s going to unseat GPS as the de facto navigation system.
by lebiru 8y ago
How is this not big news? It sounds like it’s going to unseat GPS as the de facto navigation system.
- dmitrygr 8y agoBecause you didn't read. This is just a fancy accelerometer. You need to integrate it to infer position. Repeated integration always produces errors. Even this accelerometer being 1,000 times more precise than existing ones doesn't help with how math works. Integration will always produce errors.
- jfoutz 8y agoSo, sure. I’ve written velocity guessers based on spinning rust disk accelerometers. It’s easy to build a poor quality system. But an afternoon hack can get you to a few percent accuracy. Analog integration will improve your accuracy a ton. Multiple systems, averaged will improve accuracy even more. Sure, there are problems. But tomahawk missiles use inertial guidance. Autopilots do it to. More data will give better answers. But don’t sell ig short. You can get very good answers.
- dmitrygr 8y agoReal gyro != Mems gyro. Real gyro is REALLY rigid in space. Mems gyro isn't. It causes errors after mere minutes of integration. INS systems in planes and gyros in missiles are REAL gyros. This isn't. This is more like a better mems system.
- jfoutz 8y agoIt seems like the jury is still out. Perhaps 10,000 of them work out better than a large system. It’ll take time for a lab experiment to turn into a production system. You’re probably right in the short term, for an arbitrarily large value of short.
- fyfy18 8y agoI remember reading an article a few months ago (I guess here) about a precursor to GPS based navigation for cars that used inertial guidance. You needed to set the location when you started driving, but after that it just used inertial guidance to figure out your position. I really wish smartphone navigation apps would use this, as I've ended up taking the wrong directions in tunnels or at the exits of tunnels (as it takes a few seconds to get a GPS fix).
- creatornator 8y agoNowadays high-end accelerometers/gyros use fiber optic interferometers much more precisely than previously possible.[0][1] [0] https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2017/03/measuring-acceleration-light https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2017/03/measuring-acce... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system#Fiber_optic_gyros_(FOG) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system#Fib...
- tensor 8y agoThe article almost makes it sound like the implementation is such that it only makes sense for extremely large vehicles. It will likely be a long time before it becomes small and cheap enough to replace a significant fraction of GPS uses.
- windows_tips 8y agoWhat article? This appears to be a link to a subscription signup landing page.